


The Tale of Ty Lee

by cablesscutie



Series: At the Crossroads of Destiny and Decision [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, I will absolutely die on this hill, Pairings to come, Ty Lee has a rich inner life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25907056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cablesscutie/pseuds/cablesscutie
Summary: "Ty Lee had known joining Azula’s 'elite team' was going to go badly for her.  She’d just expected the bad part to come at the end, once everything had spiraled out of control, and maybe she’d be able to dance away from or back-flip over whatever the bad stuff was like she usually did."orTy Lee's life story actually gets to be about her.
Relationships: Azula & Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai & Ty Lee (Avatar)
Series: At the Crossroads of Destiny and Decision [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1880146
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	1. It's a Long, Long Way to Ba Sing Se

**Author's Note:**

> This story started as bedtime stories about Ty Lee written for my seven year old cousin. It has rapidly spiraled out of control to become much more as Ty Lee has taken on her own clear desires and trajectory in my mind. There now exist two versions of this story: the first version of bedtime stories about Ty Lee in canon, and the more grownup post-canon timeline that is forthcoming and will only be read on here. I'm very excited for all of you to read her journey and hopefully get something out of it yourselves.

Ty Lee had known joining Azula’s “elite team” was going to go badly for her. She’d just expected the bad part to come at the end, once everything had spiraled out of control, and maybe she’d be able to dance away from or back-flip over whatever the bad stuff was like she usually did. 

When Azula told her they were going to pick up Mai in Omashu, she had thought things were looking up. It had been _ages_ since she got to hang out with her best friends, and the three of them really did have so much fun together at the Fire Nation Royal Academy For Girls. Maybe a road trip was just what they needed! Mai’s aura was so gray from all the time she spent shut up in her father’s house, and Azula’s was the same terrifying bright blue as her fire. Clearly she’d been listening to way too many Firelord speeches and not nearly enough gossip. Plus she’d be willing to bet _neither_ of them was keeping up with the yoga routines she taught them. Who knew, maybe by the time they caught up with Zuko and their uncle, Azula wouldn’t be so angry anymore and all of them could just hang out again like when they were little.

That hope was short-lived. Not long after they started traveling together, Azula decided they _also_ needed to be hunting the Avatar. Suddenly, there was no more sleeping in fancy rooms or people bowing to them. They were chasing a giant smelly bison all through the night and sleeping in a metal tank where the engines clanked, and the bunks shook, and Azula snored _so_ loud and nobody could _ever_ tell her to roll over! It was like the worst camping trip in history. The only exciting part was that she got to practice her chi-blocking on those Water Tribe kids, but even _that_ ended with her and Mai getting thrown into a river full of wet fur clumps.

She started to worry that if this was how bad things were starting out, the end was _not_ going to be pretty. But one does not simply walk away from Azula - not unless they want to end up like Zuko anyway, and that terrible ponytail just does _not_ look flattering on anybody. So as they travelled towards Ba Sing Se with War Minister Qin and his drill, Ty Lee tried to make the best of it. 

She braided Mai’s hair into elaborate flowers and animals (it was amazing what you could do with hair when your model was so eerily still).

She made up new yoga poses that only she could manage to pull off.

Then she made Mai help her come up with names for the poses. “What am I now?” she asked, looking at her friend upside down. Mai did not look up from sharpening her knives. 

“Some kind of bird?”

“You’re not looking!”

She finished with the knife in hand and set it aside. Picking up another, she glanced at Ty Lee out of the corner of her eye and guessed, “A monkey?” Ty Lee definitely did _not_ look like a monkey.

“Mai!” Mai sighed.

“You know I’m no good at guessing. Just tell me what you are.”

“It’s not about guessing, silly! It’s like finding the pictures in the clouds - you just need to be creative!”

“I’m not that either.”

“Of course you are!” Ty Lee protested. She would never understand how Mai could be so down on herself. Ty Lee had always liked herself - so much so that she ran away from home and joined the circus so that she could be even _more_ of herself. A lot of people didn’t understand why she’d given up a life of luxury in the capital city to share tents with animals and traveling oddballs, but Mai hadn’t questioned her decision. Her silent acceptance was one of the many things about her that Ty Lee thought was completely wonderful, and that so many people misread as Mai not caring. 

Before she could explain all of that, the metal door clanked open and Azula strode in. She regarded them both with her hands on her hips, observing the sight of Ty Lee still upside down and Mai armed and lounging.

“Of course Mai is what?” Azula asked, as always refusing to be left out of even the tiniest loop.

“Creative!” Ty Lee said. Azula was their other best friend - surely she understood how special Mai was. But Azula just laughed, and Ty Lee was sure she didn’t miss the tiny twitch of Mai’s eyebrows that meant she was hurt. “She is!” Ty Lee insisted. “What about all those poems she writes?”

“Which ones?” Azula asked, amused. “The gloomy ones about her parents or the mushy ones about my brother?” Mai looked away and didn’t say anything, but she was clearly embarrassed. “Anyway,” Azula said, dismissing the conversation with a wave of her hand, “We’re almost at the wall. Come sit with me on the bridge - if this thing doesn’t work you can help me punish that idiot minister.” As Azula left, she didn’t look back to see if they were following - she just knew they would. Everyone always did as she told them to; now was no different.

Ty Lee didn’t pay much attention to War Minister Qin explaining how the drill works, but to be fair, she didn’t think Azula was really listening either. Mai had brought her sharpening with her, and as Qin droned on and Azula’s expression remained impassive, he kept glancing at the knives nervously. Part way through his presentation, at his cue, the command module lurched upwards from the body of the drill so fast Ty Lee felt like her stomach got left back on the ground. From their new vantage point, the looming walls of Ba Sing Se were breathtaking. Nobody from the Fire Nation had seen the walls in years, since General Iroh withdrew, and nobody had visited the city itself since the days of Fire Lord Sozin. The thought of being one of the first people in a century to see inside the walls was thrilling.

Then, she was distracted by a huge boulder bouncing off the thick windows in front of them. She flinched back at the sound, and got up to look out the periscope and see rocks flying through the air and hitting the drill’s metal sides. Trenches full of earthbenders were waiting for them, trying to fend off the machine’s advance.

“Nothing can stop us,” the war minister said, concluding his speech. Azula studied her nails. Mai blew some hair out of her face. Another boulder hit the window. Apparently it was up to Ty Lee to be the voice of reason here.

“Hmmm,” she said, pointing at the earthbenders. “What about those muscle-y guys down there?” Another metallic _clang!_ startled her back from her view, and she frowned when she realized that Minister Qin had smacked the periscope she was using.

“Please,” he said, dismissively. “The drill’s metal shell is impervious to any earthbending attack.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is, War Minister Qin,” Azula said, and Ty Lee was briefly disappointed. Why did nobody ever listen to her? “But just to be safe,” the princess continued, “Mai and Ty Lee, take the earthbenders out!” Mai, springing into action much faster than her usual lackadaisical pace, headed for the door immediately.

“Finally,” she said. “Something to do.” Ty Lee abandoned the periscope and followed close behind. She’d been cooped up for far too long and it was seriously starting to cloud her aura - a good fight would make her feel better.

Unfortunately, the Earth King’s army was no match for her chi-blocking. She’d hoped that since these guys were professionals she might actually have to try hard enough to break a sweat. Instead, she found that as soon as she hopped into a trench full of earthbenders, everyone inside froze to stare at her in confusion. Without fail, she had taken out three of them before anyone else registered that she was a threat. By then, the others never stood a chance and she was leaping out to dash off to the next trench.

When she had taken out the last of the earthbenders, she dusted herself off and looked around to see Mai glaring down into another hole. She flipped over to her, and glanced down to see several more earthbenders pinned to the rocks. One of them managed to twitch his fingers hard enough to fling a small rock out of the hole, but it just clacked onto the ground at Mai’s feet, kicking up a little puff of dust onto the hem of her pants. Annoyed, she pressed her lips together until they disappeared, and then kicked the rock back. It flew much faster than it had been thrown, and hit the guy in the forehead.

“Ow!” he yelped. 

“Quit whining,” Mai told him. To Ty Lee, she said, “Hey.”

“Hi! Is it just me, or was this _way_ easier than it should’ve been?” Ty Lee asked.

“So boring.”

Back inside the metal drill again, the girls had lunch in Azula’s room, and then went back to the command module observation deck. Once again, Ty Lee pulled down the periscope.

“There’s nothing out there, Ty Lee,” Azula said.

“I just want to know if we can see any of the city yet,” Ty Lee said. 

When they were kids and Azula’s uncle came back for visits, he used to tell tales of the beauty of Ba Sing Se. At sunset, he said, the stones of the houses shone like gold. And the trolley that ran over the rings of the city had a view like no other. When none of the other adults were listening, he would even sing them songs he had learned on his travels and teach them Earth Kingdom dances. She and Zuko were the only ones that ever stayed for that, Azula wandering off as soon as her father had grown bored, and Mai not daring to listen to things her mother would disapprove of. Ever since those days, Ty Lee had dreamt of getting to see Ba Sing Se for herself, and the closer they got, the harder it was to contain her excitement.

There was no shining city yet, just the walls nearly swallowing up the sky ahead of them, and a dust cloud. They had seen many small dust storms in their travels across the arid landscape of the Eastern Earth Kingdom. “Hey, look at that dust cloud,” she said. “It’s so...poofy.” She looked away from the periscope and made an exploding motion with her fingers. “Poof.”

“Don’t worry, princess,” Minister Qin said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.” Ty Lee was liking this guy less and less. _She_ was the one who had spoken, and he didn’t even bother to address her. And she hadn’t meant anything when she brought up the cloud. Did he have something against making polite conversation? 

With a huff, she went back to her observation, watching as the cloud ran alongside the drill for a few more moments before dissipating and revealing bare earth again. Because of this, she was the first to know when the drill reached the wall, even before the loud groaning of machinery and Minister Qin’s announcement. She didn’t say anything though. For those few seconds, that knowledge was just for her. 

After the drill dug in and started grinding away at the stone wall, there wasn’t much to look at, so Ty Lee took her seat beside Azula again. She unbraided and re-braided her hair, did some yoga stretches, filed her nails. Then, she tried to get Azula and Mai to play I-Spy, which didn’t go so well.

Azula had announced that she would go first, and then said, “I spy with my little eye a glorious victory for the Fire Nation.”

“That’s not how you play, silly!” Ty Lee had said, laughing. “It has to be something like…” she looked around the command module. There weren’t many different color options to choose from, but she saw a light on the control panel. “Uh...Oh! I spy with my little eye, something green.”

“The light,” Azula said immediately. “You should know by now, I never miss anything.”

“Mai, you try,” Ty Lee said.

“I spy with my little eye, something black.” Ty Lee turned to see what direction Mai was looking in, and saw…

“Your eyes are closed!”

“Look at that, first guess.” Ty Lee flopped back in her chair. Clearly she needed a different game.

Just then, the door to the bridge clanked open, and one of the creepy masked engineers announced, “War Minister, an engineer was ambushed! His schematics were stolen!” Ty Lee sat up straight again. Mai opened one eye, and Azula narrowed both of hers. Then, another engineer appeared.

“War Minister, a brace on the starboard side has been cut clean through! It’s sabotage, sir!”

Azula’s voice was cold and sharp as she said, “Let’s go, ladies!”


	2. I'll Show You a Mud Pie

The three girls ran through the halls. “It’s the Avatar,” Azula said. “None of those pesky pebble benders would’ve made it inside.” Ty Lee hoped she was right, and Azula being right was usually a pretty easy bet. Even though the Water Tribe kids had been easy to take out, the Avatar himself might actually be a challenge. It had been months since she’d really gotten to feel like she was going all out - not since her terrifying last circus performance.

They crashed through the service entrance to the drill’s inner workings, and found themselves in a massive structure of steel girders, steam thick in the air. It was hot and the sound of grinding clanking metal was everywhere. Azula cocked her head, listening to the racket. Ty Lee wasn’t sure how she thought she could figure out where the sound was coming from. It was so echoey in there, it sounded like the noise was coming from everywhere all at once - even inside her head - but sure enough, Azula turned on her heel and started leaping from beam to beam, heading in a clear direction. Mai and Ty Lee took off after her.

Leaping through the air was fun - the feeling of flying and the strain of her muscles as she pushed off as fast and hard as she could, reaching for the next ledge. It was almost like the trapeze again. And when they finally saw the familiar figures of the Avatar and his friends in the distance, Ty Lee felt particularly lucky. Today was about to get _much_ more interesting. Azula announced their arrival with a blue fireball aimed right at the Avatar. She heard someone yell,

“Duck!” and the Avatar stepped out of the way just in time to see a scorch mark appear on the beam where he’d just been standing. The girls leapt down to face off with them, landing lightly on their feet.

“Wow, Azula, you were right! It is the Avatar!” Ty Lee smiled at the boy she’d met before in the woods. “...and friends.” He smiled back and waved.

“Hey,” he said, and his sister got a grip on the back of his shirt and yanked him away. _Oh well,_ Ty Lee thought. _I guess pleasantries are over_. She swung herself towards the Avatar right away before either of her friends could take the real challenge, but with a blast of wind, he and the Water Tribe kids were flying away, ducking back into the hallways.

They gave chase, and it seemed that they might lose them with how speedy the little airbender was, but a moment of indecision at a crossroads cost them valuable time and the girls were upon them. The Water Tribe kids ran one way, the Avatar the other, and Ty Lee knew with a sinking feeling exactly what Azula was going to say before she even said it.

“Follow them! The Avatar's mine!”

Ty Lee and Mai kept following, but neither of them was running quite at top speed. Both girls seemed to have silently agreed that once they actually caught up, their day was pretty much over, so they might as well stretch this out. Mai didn’t even reach for her weapons until they rounded a corner and found the siblings halfway into the hatch of another service line. Then, she flicked her wrist and sent a spray of daggers flying towards them. But they were gone, and Mai and Ty Lee stood over the hatch entrance, looking down into the pipe. They may have miscalculated in waiting to capture their enemies, but to be fair, they never expected chasing people to get them in so many gross situations.

The liquid in the pipes was beige and thick, dotted with larger chunks of rock. Beside them on the wall was a sign that read “SLURRY PIPELINE”.

“Ugh, disgusting!” Mai said, shrinking back with a hand over her nose. She wasn’t wrong, but Ty Lee knew what was ahead of her.

“C'mon! You heard Azula. We have to follow them!”

“She can shoot all the lightning she wants at me. I am not going in that wall sludge juice,” Mai said adamantly. For just a second, Ty Lee thought about closing the hatch. Maybe they could just loiter around the hall for a little bit, wander down to the cafeteria for a snack, and then when they met Azula back in her room, they would just say the Water Tribe kids got away from them. It was a nice thought, but she knew she couldn’t do it. She didn’t have Mai’s Pai Sho face - she was far too in tune with her feelings to hide them like that. Ty Lee was getting in that slurry pipeline.

She tried to tell herself that it would be just like a mud bath at the spa. Or maybe a sand scrub. Her skin would look great! She just had to get past the sliminess that would soak through her clothes, and the dark metal tube she would be trapped in, and the...frankly concerning odor of it all. But she would be fine. She was tough! Ty Lee had been making her own way in the world since she turned thirteen and joined the circus. She had learned how to ride an ostrich horse in her sleep on the road, how to stir vats of stew as tall as her, and even stuck her head in a tigerdillo’s mouth to floss its massive pointy teeth - she could handle anything! So she took hold of the hatch’s edge and vaulted into the pipe.

As she tried not to yelp at the cold, and the current snatched her away, the last thing she saw before the light disappeared was Mai, her face an impassive, waning moon. Then the metal clanged shut. Ty Lee was alone. _Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea_ , she thought. But it was too late. She was already being carried far away, deeper and deeper into the machine. She tried not to think about how this was the first time she was touching the great walls of Ba Sing Se.

The slurry pipeline was survivable. Enjoying it was a totally different story. That awful sludge was in her mouth. It tasted chalky and metallic. She didn’t think she would ever forget the horrible gritty texture of it on her teeth, or the smell creeping up the back of her nostrils. There was no way to tell exactly how quickly she was moving in the dark, but it felt _fast_ as the current tugged her along and she treaded water - er, slurry - to stay afloat. Up ahead, she could hear the Water Tribe kids coughing and spitting as they also tried to keep from swallowing too much of the stuff.

At last, there was sunlight up ahead, and Ty Lee was more than ready for the fight to resume. For making her chase them down this gross pipe, she was going to chi-block these two so hard they wouldn’t be able to feel their feel their toes for a week. She emerged from the back of the drill atop a wave of slurry, and finally took a breath of something besides damp, stale air only to find herself unceremoniously shoved back up into the opening of the pipe as the waterbender lifted her hands and shoved.

“Why don't you try blocking my chi now, circus freak?” the girl yelled. Ty Lee wanted to shout back that she’d have to do much better than “circus freak” if she wanted to hurt her feelings, but as soon as she opened her mouth, it got filled with slurry. She felt nauseous. It wasn’t at all improved by the fact that the siblings then seemed to ignore her completely, dissolving into bickering as the girl kept the current turned back on itself, the slurry churning all around Ty Lee but she herself hopelessly stuck.

Then, another girl arrived, and took up an earthbending stance beside the waterbender, and the next thing Ty Lee knew, she was getting shoved backwards, up into the drill again. Her limbs flailed as the slurry washed over her, wave after wave of it crashing over her head. Even breathing through her nose was getting difficult with all the gunk clogging her up. Then, the pipes in the drill began to groan under the building pressure.

“Woo hoo!” the boy with the ponytail shouted. The earthbender said,

“Here it comes!” Ty Lee closed her eyes and braced for impact. There was another metallic groan, followed by a series of crashes that shook the very earth, and then the force pushing against the slurry’s flow was gone and Ty Lee was suddenly rushing forward again, tumbling out the back end of the drill. It was only her quick reflexes that kept her from landing badly, but even still she could only break her fall before she slipped in the slurry and landed on her butt, skidding forward with the gushing liquid.

When she came to a stop, she shook the slurry from her hands and started wiping her face clear. She blinked dazedly up at the sun. Then Azula dropped down into the slurry beside her, splashing a wave back over Ty Lee and forcing her to start cleaning all over again. The next time she looked up, it was to another hatch clanking open and Mai’s face waxing back into view, looking as though nothing had happened at all.

“We lost.”

* * *

The whole time she was trying to wash the slurry out of her hair that evening, Ty Lee kept worrying that Azula would be mad at her for failing to capture the other kids, or at Mai for not even really trying. But the harsh punishment she feared never came. When she apologized, Azula had simply flicked another clump of slurry from where it was wedged under her sharp nails and said, “Your shortcomings are the least of my concern. Apparently my father’s War Minister has lost his touch.” She slid her eyes over to Minister Qin, who looked quite pale. “I must write to him immediately, and find out how he would have me proceed.” Ty Lee shuddered at the thought. She’d only ever been in the same room as Azula’s father a handful of times, but every one of them had left her with sweating palms and no appetite. Looking at Azula just then, she wondered if she’d be able to finish her dinner sitting across from her later.

As it would turn out, Azula opted to dine alone in her room that night, and Minister Qin’s secretary expressed that his boss would love to host the ladies himself, but unfortunately he was feeling ill and so was not having dinner that night. That left Mai and Ty Lee to eat with the crew in the cafeteria, which, of course, meant that they elected to eat at a table in the corner by themselves.

Dinner was much plainer than they were used to. They went through the line with the crewmembers, sullen from the day’s humiliating defeat and the fact that they were forced to camp out in the shell of their destroyed superweapon until arrangements could be made to cart them back to a colony town. Even the food itself seemed depressed, the stew they served looking almost gray and not smelling of anything but salt.

“Ugh,” Mai said, picking up a spoonful and watching with distaste as it slopped back into the bowl. “I think they tried to cook the wall sludge juice.” Ty Lee poked at her own food, and then said,

“It _looks_ like komodo chicken, but it _smells_ kind of like seaweed.” She tried a small bite, and her face twisted up in disgust. “But it definitely tastes...eel...y.”

“I’m _not_ eating that.” Ty Lee made herself take another bite. This time, she was able to make a small grimacey smile afterwards.

“It’s...an acquired taste.”

“Well, _I’d_ rather acquire a taste for shoe leather than eat this.” Mai pushed her bowl away and Ty Lee was sure she meant it. Ty Lee stirred her stew, trying to find the will to keep eating it, and wondered if she had any more fire flakes in her secret stash.

“Do you think Azula is mad at us?” Ty Lee asked eventually, unable to quell her anxiety from earlier.

“She’s writing to her dad,” Mai said. “You know how weird she is about that. She’ll be fine in the morning.”

“Are you sure?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t the first time those annoying kids got away. Not to mention Azula didn’t exactly do so great capturing the Avatar.” Ty Lee gasped and shushed Mai, glancing around to see if anyone had heard her talking. “What? It’s true. Azula isn’t going to hurt us, so just calm down,” Mai said. Ty Lee knew that technically everything that Mai had said was true, but she’d also learned to trust her own instincts over the years. She had a certain way of just sensing things, and as she tried to force herself through a bowl of stew, her gut was telling her that something was terribly wrong.


	3. Ty Lee the Terrific

Despite Ty Lee’s fears about Azula’s wrath, after the terrible mess of the drill, she and Mai found themselves on a mini vacation. Azula and War Minister Qin were called back to the capital city to “debrief” which, judging from Azula’s wicked grin and Qin’s pallor, meant that the Fire Lord had decided on a punishment for the failure of the drill. Mai and Ty Lee had been invited back to observe, but had opted to hang around the small colony city they’d been extracted to and wait for her. Somehow, it didn’t seem like they would be very entertained, and Mai appeared to be on board with Ty Lee’s wish to avoid hanging out with the Fire Lord as much as possible.

They exhausted the town’s meagre offerings for tourism within the first couple of days, wandering the small shopping district and watching artisans work. Ty Lee had seen a vase that would look nice in her mother’s living room, and she’d almost bought it before she remembered that she hadn’t been home in almost two years. The way her mother was with interior design, the whole house was probably re-done by then. It made her sad to think that the place she still thought of as home might’ve moved on without her. With six more sisters that looked just like her, life would’ve continued on. To most people, it probably wouldn’t seem as though anything had changed at all.

In the end, she left the vase and bought Azula some earrings from a glass blower, and found a wickedly sharp hair pin at a metal-smith’s that made Mai actually grin. Her friends were her new family, she thought. Together, they were unstoppable, and perhaps best of all, they were each _different_. She never needed to be afraid that Mai would mistake her for Azula, or that Azula would think she was replaceable. With them, she had a niche - a special spot on their team that nobody else could fill.

“What should we do tonight?” Ty Lee asked Mai when they went back to the inn for dinner.

“We’ve done everything worth doing here,” Mai said, impaling a piece of zucchini with her chopstick. “Maybe we should’ve just gone with Azula.” She pondered it, then shuddered. “Or not. Our neighborhood is lame too. Just a bunch of dusty old politicians.”

“Yeah, plus...I mean, Azula’s dad is kinda…”

“Whatever.” Mai said, just too fast to be casual. Yeah, that was what Ty Lee thought.

“Come on,” she said, nudging Mai’s foot under the table. “We can think of something! Let’s just go _out_.”

“And do _what_?

“Find an adventure!” Mai sighed.

“Fine.”

As luck would have it, the circus was in town. This luck was, as Ty Lee was starting to get used to, bad. They had followed the end of a crowd of people streaming down the main street, hoping that where they were going was exciting, only to find themselves headed towards a big top tent all too familiar for Ty Lee. The girls paused in front of it. Mai didn’t say anything as Ty Lee looked, a small, bitter feeling twisting in her stomach, when faced with the easy, silly life Azula had all but dragged her from. She missed it - the bright colors, cheering crowds that threw flowers to her, and the sound of her name echoing as the ringmaster introduced “Ty Lee the Terrific!” The thought of walking inside the tent and becoming just a face in the crowd where she’d once been a star was awful. Ty Lee looked away from the bright lights of the big top. Mai, watching her out of the corner of her eye, said,

“Please don’t make me go in there with all those screaming kids.” Ty Lee’s smile came back. She was right. Mai was wonderful. Then, she had an idea.

“Can we go see if I can get into the animal tent though? I really want to say hi to some of them. I didn’t exactly get to say goodbye.”

“As long as I don’t have to go in, I don’t really care.”

“We’ll get you some fried dough,” Ty Lee promised. Mai grunted noncommittally, but they did go to the fried dough booth, and Mai very carefully tapped out the right ratio of powdered sugar to cinnamon.

Wandering back through the performer tents behind the big top, Ty Lee kept an eye out for familiar faces, but it seemed that several of the other acts had turned over while she was gone. The psychic was still the same though, and when Ty Lee waved to her, she just smiled cryptically and said, “I knew you’d be back.” Finding the animal tent wasn’t difficult - it was the second biggest tent they travelled with, and there was always some kind of noise happening. Ty Lee pointed Mai towards a comfy-looking hay bale, and skipped into the tent.

She went to the tigerdillo first - they had an understanding after the whole flossing incident, and she rubbed its fuzzy snout while it tried to lick her through the bars of the cage.

“Hey there,” she said. “I missed you buddy.” A strange growling sound from behind her drew her attention to a cage on the other side of the tent, and Ty Lee froze. It was the Avatar’s sky bison. “Mai!” She called. There was no answer. “Mai!” she shouted again, panicked. Outside the flap of the tent, Mai called back,

“I don’t care how cute it is, I am _not_ going in there.” Ty Lee rushed over to the flap and pulled it back to find Mai standing there with her arms crossed. Her severe expression was tempered by the powdered sugar moustache she was sporting, but her heels were dug in as firmly as ever when Ty Lee tried to drag her inside. “No _way_. It smells in there. It’s like -”

“The Avatar’s bison!” Ty Lee said, giving Mai’s arm a shake.

“I can finish my own sentences, thanks, but yeah.”

“No! Mai, the Avatar’s bison is _here_ \- we have to tell Azula!”

“Azula’s in the capital.”

“We have to write her to come back then!” Ty Lee yanked with all her might, and Mai leaned back, and the two girls stumbled and almost fell in the mud as they crashed into the path of the ringmaster.

“Ty Lee?” He asked, surprised. “Oh thank the spirits!” Ty Lee and Mai glanced at each other in confusion.

“Um...it’s nice to see you too?”

“Not nearly as nice as it is to see _you_. The clowns have food poisoning. We’re down an act, and the new one isn’t ready.

“Oh that’s terrible! Are they alright?” The ringmaster waved his hand dismissively.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure they’ll be fine, but…”

“But?”

“I don’t suppose you would consider bringing back your old act?” She was stunned. He must’ve mistaken her silence for reluctance, because he said, “Just think - our grand finale! Ty Lee the Terrific, one night only!” Mai tensed, and Ty Lee knew that if she didn’t want to do it, her friend would make him leave them alone. But... _the grand finale of the show_... _Ty Lee the Terrific, one night only_.

“I’ll do it!”

“Fabulous! We still have your uniform in the costume tent!” As she was dragged off to wardrobe, Ty Lee looked over her shoulder to ask Mai,

“You’ll watch?” Mai gave a tiny nod, and then was gone, swallowed up by the crowd.

Ty Lee was welcomed back to the costume tent with open arms, accepting thanks and hugs from some performers she remembered as well as some of the new ones who were just grateful that she was saving the show. And then, just as fast, she was hearing her name called - “Our grand finale! Ty Lee the Terrific!” The crowd exploded into cheers. She smiled, and bounded out into the lights. Sitting front row, another fried dough on her lap and grimacing at the excited shrieks of the kids beside her, Mai was clapping.

* * *

Ty Lee the Terrific did not, in fact, end up being a one night only event.

The girls didn’t write to Azula either.

As guilty as Ty Lee felt for not telling her about the Avatar’s bison, she reasoned that the Avatar wouldn’t abandon his bison, and as long as they knew where the animal was, they knew where he would eventually end up. If Ty Lee got to have a little fun while they waited for Azula to return and the Avatar to appear, was that really so bad? Clearly Mai didn’t think so, since she kept going to the circus too, watching every performance from the front row. It was a nice routine, and she started to think that maybe this was all that had been missing from her first time with the circus. Adoring fans, fuzzy animals, and her best friend - what more could a girl ask for?

Of course, it was just as she started to relax that the wheels came off the whole thing pretty much all at once.

First: the Avatar’s bison - apparently the new act the circus had been waiting on - escaped at the end of his first and only performance. After the chaos died down and Ty Lee and Mai had found each other, Ty Lee said, “Azula’s gonna be really mad, isn’t she?” Mai shrugged.

“Just don’t tell her.”

“But Mai -”

“How much do you honestly think Azula pays attention to what we say?”

“She’s our friend, I’m sure she -”

“Is too obsessed with her missions from her father to more than half listen to anyone else?” Ty Lee blinked at her. “Yeah, I can finish your sentences too. Listen, just don’t say anything when she gets back. She never even asked me about the drill, and she doesn’t think we were doing anything here. It’s not gonna come up. Okay?”

“Okay.”

The second thing: the morning after the Avatar’s bison disappeared, Mai and Ty Lee woke to Azula sitting in their room at the inn, an empty teacup and a map in front of her.

“The Avatar’s bison was here,” Azula said. Ty Lee didn’t even know how Azula knew she had woken up because she hadn’t really moved yet.

“Azula -” Ty Lee started, her voice shaky with nerves. Only, she was cut off by Mai, suddenly awake too.

“We should go now then.”

“That’s a surprising amount of conviction, Mai,” Azula said mildly.

“I’m sick of this place,” Mai said, flopping onto her back again. Her voice was back to its usual slow and flat delivery, but suddenly not being able to see her face unsettled Ty Lee. Azula shrugged.

“You should’ve come with me while you had the chance instead of staying in this backwater.” Mai grunted, then rolled out of bed and started packing her things. Ty Lee scrambled out from under her covers and started collecting her belongings too, realizing that Mai had stopped her from confessing. She was going to get away with it - having a whole week of her life just the way she wanted it.

Later, as they rode their mongoose lizards through the woods, Azula told them she had picked up a fresh trail of familiar fur clumps as she was returning to town. After brief scouting to determine the animal’s heading, she’d plotted it on a map. The bison didn’t have an obvious destination, but where the bison went, so did the Avatar eventually, and where the Avatar went so did Zuko and Iroh, so that was their clearest direction for the time being. Mai looked over to Ty Lee after the story was finished, and mimed zipping her lips shut. Ty Lee nodded and focused on the trail ahead of them.

Hours passed before they heard the voices: girls talking, and then the unmistakable growl of a sky bison. Azula announced their presence by knocking a tree down with a lighting bolt. It cracked and fell across the trail, flames spreading along the felled trunk. As they entered the clearing, Azula held up the last clump of fur they had found and smirked.

“My, my, you're easy to find.” she mused. “It's really astounding my brother hasn't captured you yet.”

Ty Lee’s attention, however, was focused on the bison’s companions. The girls that surrounded him were identical - their clothing, their makeup, the way they fell into a defensive formation, moving as one. It was uncanny. The only one who looked a little different had some kind of gold headpiece. She must’ve been the leader, since she was the one to address the princess.

“What do you want with us?” the girl demanded. She sounded barely older than them.

“Who are you? The Avatar's _fan_ girls?” Azula mocked. Secretly, Ty Lee thought Azula had her uncle’s sense of humor. She’d always given the old man’s jokes at least a pity laugh, so she said,

“Oh, I get it. Good one, Azula.” Azula almost smiled.

“If you're looking for the Avatar, you're out of luck,” the girls’ leader said, clearly trying for intimidating. Mai sighed.

“I knew this was a waste of time,” she said, quiet enough that Azula probably didn’t hear her, but Ty Lee did.

“No Avatar, huh. Well, that's okay. Any friend of the Avatar is an enemy of mine!” As Azula lept from her mongoose lizard and started hurling fire at the girls in green, Ty Lee and Mai jumped into the fight right behind her.

It was disorienting to fight them when she couldn’t quite tell if she was fighting two girls in different places or just one very quick girl, and Ty Lee wondered if this is what her parents felt like all the time with her and her sisters. She didn’t like the thought, and shoved it aside, quickly chi-blocking one of the girls as she knocked away Mai’s darts.

“You're not prettier than we are,” she told the girl as she fell, the line slipping out without really thinking. It was a variation on a common theme of arguments with her sisters. With seven girls who all looked alike, fights about who was prettiest were common - just like fights about who was tallest or shortest or whose eyes were a slightly different color from the rest. Anything that could set you apart was coveted.

Ty Lee twisted out of the way of a fan aimed to jab her in the shoulder, and punched her opponent in the opposite shoulder before she could withdraw. The momentary surprise was enough of an opening, and the other girl couldn’t quite deflect the rest of Ty Lee’s hits as she immobilized her. Mai had made quick work of pinning another couple warriors to trees, their big uniforms making easy targets for sharp things to tack them to trunks. Azula was locked in a battle with the leader, who was holding her own admirably but was clearly outmatched.

As they watched, Azula kicked the girl’s sword from her hands. Out of weapons, she stood no chance, but planted her feet and raised her fists anyway, refusing to surrender. Azula’s lips twitched into a smirk, and her fists burst into flame. The look on Azula’s face that reminded Ty Lee too much of the Fire Lord was back, her stomach twisted, and then Ty Lee lunged forward before Azula could strike, jabbing the girl’s pressure points so that she fell like a rag doll. Like a switch had been turned off, Azula’s flames extinguished, her face went blank, and she turned away. The limp warrior was yelling insults even as Azula ordered Mai and Ty Lee to tie them all up and turned her mongoose lizard in the direction the bison had flown.


End file.
